Romare Bearden Inspired Collage

Welcome back! and Happy New Year!
Today we took a look at the collage work of Romare Bearden. We had a great discussion about his style of work and how students could create this look themselves. We had oil pastels, newspaper, magazines and a huge pile of scraps that we have been saving since the beginning of the year. All of these supplies were used to create self portraits!

Inspired By Matisse

Inspired by Matisse this week students created some amazing bird images by cutting and pasting paper. They also included wonderful organic shaped borders to their frames.
Enjoy the holiday weeks to come and all the snowy fun that you can!

Snowmen! Near, Far and In Between!

Today we used an imaginary telescope to zoom in on a snowman. I read the book All You Need For a Snowman by Alice Schertle. We looked closely at the illustrations and talked about pattern as well as foreground, middle and background.Students drew three different snowman pictures using colored pencil demonstrating near, far and in between!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Have a wonderful and safe holiday!

Mayflower Art

This week we continued our discussion of shapes. I read the book Ship Shapes by Stella Blackstone. We had a lovely discussion about different types of shapes including the semi-circle, which was new to many students! The book has wonderful collage like illustrations. Since Thanksgiving is nearly upon us it seemed appropriate to do a project incorporating the Mayflower!

Miro Inspired People in Motion

Today we took a look at a book titled Shapesville by Andy Mills, Becky Osborn, and Erica Neitz. This is a wonderful book about being happy and proud of who you are and respecting those around you. The illustrations are characters made from many different shapes, sizes and colors emphasizing the point of accepting everyone for who they are.
Next, we looked at some work of Miro. We discussed what a drawing might look like of a person standing still with straight limbs and what one might look like of a person in action. Students then drew an image of a person in action in oil pastel and finished it off with brilliant watercolor!

Alphabeasties

This week we are working on a wonderful alphabet project, soon to be displayed in the hallway, which made me think of the book Alphabeasties.
I am crazy about this book! It is a beautifully designed book about the alphabet for children and, in my opinion, adults too! It could even be a coffee table book! This is not an ordinary abc book. There is so much to see which makes it easy to read and simply look at over and over again. Not to mention it has a local connection having been created by two designers in St.Paul. They also have the most amazing flash cards that would be great to decorate a room with. Here is the amazon link for the book!

p.s.If you have an iphone and are inspired by the book, the app TypeDrawing is a lot of fun!